TVSquad

Lately, Don Draper has not been coming off as a very nice guy on Mad Men. In fact, he's been a complete jerk. However, if there's one thing positive about the tall, dark and handsome ad man, he's a great dresser. Jon Hamm looks amazing in Don Draper's suits. Well, now so can you. Brooks Brothers is selling the Mad Men Edition suit for a mere $998. (Hey, that's not a grand, unless you count tax).

Don't dawdle, though. There's only 250 suits in the limited edition run. The look is inspired by the Mad Men 1960's Madison Avenue style, which could also be the How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying look from the Broadway show or The Dick Van Dyke Show look, depending on your favorite reference point from the '60s.

I know, I know, that's an impossible question to answer. But Harris just conducted a poll where they asked people what their favorite shows are. Topping the list are shows like M*A*S*H, Seinfeld, Friends, House, Star Trek, and The Simpsons. The number one show? CSI. Yeah, that's my thought exactly. What, do these people have long-term memory loss?

My list would include The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, The Twilight Zone, The West Wing, The Andy Griffith Show, NewsRadio, Sports Night, Lost, Magnum, P.I., Kate and Allie, and Columbo. Oh, and Mad Men and 30 Rock have zoomed onto the list in the past couple of years. What's on your all-time list?

I adore Carl Reiner. There. I said it. What are you going to do about it? No, seriously, if there's another actor/writer/director/producer in show business who's made me laugh more than Mr. Reiner, I can't think of him/her right now. He's been one of Hollywood's prime time jewels for six decades. So, the news that Carl Reiner is guesting on the House season finale makes me very, very happy.

According to the House powers that be, Mr. Reiner will be a clinic patient at Princeton Plainsboro, and his interaction is slated to be with Dr. Cuddy. Good for Lisa Edelstein!

The success of Slumdog Millionaire and Frost/Nixon recently inspired me to assess the ten best movies about television. TV has been a fertile source of entertainment for filmmakers. The TV turf is also a popular setting for TV shows, and there have been some all-time great shows about the tube. Here are nine that I think warrant special recognition -- in no special order.

1. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
It all started at WJM-TV in Minneapolis. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was the perfect sitcom blend of home and work, and work happened to be the local TV news team. As Mary Richards, the associate producer, Mary Tyler Moore was the single girl America loved because she was real, funny, gorgeous and lovable. At work, the news was mangled nightly by Ted Baxter, the quintessential news reader anchorman who loved every dulcet tone of his voice and had no idea what he was reporting. In perfect irony, when the show came to an end, most everyone at WJM -- Lou Grant, Murray Slaughter, Sue Anne Nivens, Mary -- were fired. Only Ted was spared!

Last week's episode of Big Love received more hype than any other show this season for one simple reason. The Church of Latter-Day-Saints (LDS) was protesting – in advance – the HBO drama depicting a secret church ritual. The church felt that the producers had gone too far by showing a sacred ceremony that was not meant to be revealed to those who are not members of the faith. While I respect their desire to protect their traditions, I think they should have waited till the show aired, because now that I've seen it, my attitude is simply this, "No big deal."

There is no better way to get inside a character's head (without resorting to charging up some power cutting tools and laying down some newspaper) than writing in a dream sequence.

Some of them, however, try to explain too much or cover too much ground and end up becoming the kind of dreams that keeps our Paxil dosage high and GlaxoSmithKline's stock price higher.

These are those mindfreaks.

The New Adventures of Old Christine is one of my favorite sitcoms and last night's episode included what I saw as a tribute to TV icons Lucille Ball and Mary Tyler Moore, as well as Seinfeld. Yes, Julia Louis-Dreyfus had a true Elaine moment that was not only hilarious, but a real wink to her Seinfeld fans.

The CBS sitcom came up with a doozy of a situation, although it felt familiar to me, which I'll explain why in a moment. Christine was determined to prove that she was not afraid of living alone and wound up locked out of her house. She climbed back in through a bathroom window and got her foot stuck in the toilet bowl!

The TV neighbor has served many useful roles over the years; some that many thought had been lost by the unrelenting sands of time.

They've become the great modern philosopher like Wilson, the evolving thinker like Bill Dauterive, the bearer of bad news like Newman, and even the court jester -- as long as you don't count one of these guys.

Not only would we not want some of them living next door to us, we wouldn't want them living. Period. These are the annoying next-door neighbors who should have been run out by the Neighborhood Homeowners' Association with torches and pitchforks.

Recently, when I interviewed Matt Weiner, the creator of AMC's Mad Men, we talked about the movies, books and television shows that influenced the inception of the show. The 1960 Oscar-winning best picture The Apartment was one, so were the sitcoms Dobie Gillis and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Of all the television shows he mentioned, though, there was one that was the most influential. "You can't have the '60s without The Twilight Zone. It is a mind opening experience for a generation," said Matt. "It was not just science fiction, it dealt with social issues. It's filled with the texture of real life. Just the idea of having a show every week where you don't know who is going to be in it and what it's going to be about, to have this acceptance of the fact that we don't know everything about the world. That in itself was something."

Going through The Twilight Zone episode guide, there are quite a few shows in which you can see where Mad Men could find inspiration. Here's four that reminded me of Don and Betty and Pete and Sterling Cooper:

When Matt Weiner was a successful sitcom writer -- CBS's Becker -- he had this idea for another kind of show. He couldn't figure out how to pitch it, so he wrote a sample script. The Sopranos' creator David Chase read it and hired him. After copping a couple of Emmys for his work on that HBO drama, Weiner finally got his spec script sold. Now, Mad Men has earned 16 Emmy nominations and Matt Weiner is working on the second season of the show.

Recently, for TV Week, I interviewed Matt about the Emmy nominations. Here are some other thoughts he shared with me about Mad Men:

TVS: What's the show all about to you?

Matt Weiner: A lot of the episodes are about "who am I." A lot of the shows are about what's embarrassing. A lot of it's about denial, about how we juggle our work and our private lives. A lot of the issues that came up in the early 1960s are really hitting us right now.

The bar mitzvah is a Jewish rite of passage, the time in a boy's life when he becomes a man -- symbolically -- by reading from the Torah. When a girl does the ritual, it's called a bat mitzvah. I mention all this because in TV, the bar/bat mitzvah has been the catalyst for some wonderful episodes, mostly on sitcoms.

The Simpsons celebrated Krusty the Klown's bar mitzvah in the episode "Today I Am A Klown," which was a variation on one of the all-time great sitcom bar mitzvahs of all time: the episode "Buddy Sorrell, Man and Boy," on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Square Pegs shared "Muffy's Bat Mitzvah" with viewers, and this past season, Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David used his friend Jeff Greene's daughter Sammi's bat mitzvah to announce that he never put a gerbil up his butt.

New York, New York -- a place so big that had to name it twice. Isn't that what they say about the Big Apple? Recently, movie critic Leonard Maltin, host of the ReelzChannel original series Secret's Out named his picks for the 15 greatest New York scenes in movie history. That got me thinking about the television shows that are intimately tied to New York, series that are inextricably New York shows. Whether they are -- or were -- filmed in the city, here's 15 absolutely, positively New York TV shows (in the order in which they debuted!). You don't have to agree with me -- and I may have overlooked one or two (which I urge you to comment and let me know) -- but I have good reasons for every one of my choices!

(S03E10) "Dr. Pronto to reception please." - Nurse

The simple decision to recap last week's episode in such a comically dramatic style is one of the things that sets My Name is Earl apart from other sitcoms.

After watching Catalina's scene with Joy's children, I now understand why they have so little screen time. They are bad actors. While I give the show credit for using kids who actually look like their parents, I feel that these kids could easily fall into the DJ Conner trap where their continuing lack of cuteness reveals their lack of talent. As a side note, seeing Catalina with those kids really made it difficult for me to enjoy her scenes in my usual way. Hey, I'm a creep not a criminal.

Whitney Matheson has an interesting topic over at the Pop Candy blog. She lists her 10 favorite props from the movies, and includes some items like Indy's hat from the Raiders of the Lost Ark movies, Darth Vader's light saber, and many items from Steve Martin's The Jerk. This got me thinking, what props from TV shows would I like to own? I have a few from Ed, including a name plate from the courtroom and a drinking bird, but I'd like more. My list is below, in no particular order.

Anything from The Dick Van Dyke Show: In particular, the typewriter in the office or anything from the Petrie's kitchen. Or maybe the ottoman Rob trips over!

Welcome to TV Squad Lists (formerly 'The Five'), a feature where each blogger has a chance to list his or her own rundown of things in television that stand out from the rest, both good and bad.

Being newly single, I've been spending a lot of time these days thinking about the perfect woman. More often than not, my thoughts end up drifting into the realm of television and all of the perfect women there. So I decided to compile a list of the ten hottest moms on television. Unfortunately, there were way too many to fit on a top ten list, so I expanded the list to fifteen. This was a tough list to compile and I'm sure many of your favorites are absent, but I doubt that anyone can refute the fifteen below.

Susan Mayer - Desperate Housewives (Teri Hatcher) Hatcher has always been smoking hot but it wasn't until Desperate Housewives that she became a TV mom. The best part of her character is how Susan is continually clumsy, awkward and unsure of herself and still manages to be hot.